Plotting many, many points on a map.

February 17, 2009 9:08 AM

What free website(s)/program(s) can I use to plot a large database of addresses on a map? Multiplottr.com allows me to load in my data and then export a .kml file, which I can import into Google Maps. But it only works for a subset of data; it cannot handle my full database of 15,000 locations.

I like multiplotter because beyond just street address and city/state/zip, I can attach a specific color pin and a label to each datapoint. Looking for something that produces a similar result (preferably in cooperation with Google Maps) and can handle a much larger data set. I'm starting out with an excel file.

posted by yom3ts to computers & internet (5 comments total)

BatchGeoCode works fairly well. You do need to break your data into chunks to use it, though. I recently used it for a customer list of about that size.
posted by odinsdream at 9:16 AM on February 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

I came in here to suggest BatchGeoCode as well.
posted by desjardins at 9:20 AM on February 17

Maybe a bit much for your needs, but Django + GeoDjango would work.
posted by The Michael The at 9:30 AM on February 17

You can set up google maps to use a datasource for the positions on a map, which can be a Google Docs spreadsheet. So if you can export your data into a format that matches the format of the datasheet, you can save it as an Excel or CSV file, open it in Google Docs, and then process that with Google Maps. Not sure if that would be easier or harder than BatchGeoCode (never used it).

Of course, I'm not sure what the data size limit is for this...it's possible this is the same limitation you experienced with Multiplottr.
posted by Deathalicious at 11:07 AM on February 17

Might be interested in the Million Marker Map by Maciej Ceglowski and Jason Williams.
posted by dreamyshade at 12:41 AM on February 18